Nippon Maru 1:150

Product detailed description

Ship plans HERE
History on Wikipedia HERE

Nippon Maru is a Japanese 4 mast bark. She was built in 1930 in Kobe. The ship is 91 m long, and has a steel hull. The barque had 4 masts which towered 40 m above the water and carried a total of 29 sails, and additional propulsion was provided by 2 diesel engines with a total power of 600 hp. She only occasionally sails to various sailing meetings around the world with a crew of volunteers. There are several links to this ship on the web, including this one HERE, which shows footage of a cruise to Honolulu.
The kits for this ship are produced in several scales, namely 1:100, 1:150 and 1:350. From catalogues I saw that they make very similar models of about 3 other ships Nihon Maru, Kaiou Maru, Kanrin Maru ....
The kit itself is very high quality, as all IMAI products are. The parts are well molded, and even nicely boxed. My only complaint is the lack of a rigging plan, but that is a problem with probably all sailboat kits.